Less is more in the PR battle

THE recent General Election has thrown into sharp contrast the vast differences in both political parties and their ability to outspend each other on spin.
It is often the same with ordinary businesses. Larger corporations have huge budgets allowing them to buy advertising space, pay for continual SEO and PPC while maintaining an army of internal PR and comms teams.
It can often be wasted.
A key feature of the recent election campaign is that despite one party spending millions on social media in the final days of the campaign they were wasting money compared to their major opponents who cleverly targeted the right market.
A budget video and song with a very sharp message was downloaded 30,000 times and shared 1million times on YouTube hitting a far wider market than any of its opponents’ material.
Similarly two contrasting stories of life under one party were shared 2.2millon times on Facebook.

Numbers are not everything. Here at Carmel Harrison PR we like to have a clear communication strategy in place with our customers. Before we can work on any PR campaign we need to understand who their target audience is and what they want to say to those people.
Once those two key pieces of information are pinned down then the next thing to do is understand where your target audience is going to go for information and how it is going to make informed decisions.
While digital platforms have revolutionised communications in some sectors they count for very little. Manufacturing and industry, the key sectors that Carmel Harrison PR operates in prefer face to face communications with people going through doors and they appreciate having paper brochures to read and direct mail.
While website are vital as an information repository our customers understand they have to make their brochures available in paper form either as printed versions or as downloads that customers can run off themselves.

The personal relationship that people build with others counts for an awful lot and increasingly we are seeing many manufacturers turn their backs on social media.
Of course digital does have its place and video embedded into websites can help demonstrate the value and capabilities of a product far better than any piece of paper, but there has to be an understanding of where and how people are accessing their information.
If you wold like help constructing your communications strategy so that you communicate effectively with your target audience then please get in touch. Carmel@carmelharrisonpr.com, or tel 01924 831114.